Computer Science > Competition > Undergraduate Researchers Showcase Projects at the 3rd Annual CS Research Expo

Undergraduate Researchers Showcase Projects at the 3rd Annual CS Research Expo

This past April, The UT Dallas Computer Science Department held the Third Annual Computer Science Research Expo (CSREX) as a way to encourage undergraduate students to engage in research. Computer Science and Software Engineering students from around Texas and the Southwest submitted their research papers, posters, and software demos for the Expo. The Expo aimed to promote undergraduate research by having computer science (CS) and software engineering (SE) undergraduate students present their research. Undergraduate UT Dallas CS/SE Students were especially encouraged to participate. “Not everyone needs to wait until graduate school to do research.  Many students have interesting and original ideas much earlier, and the Computer Science Undergraduate Research Expo provides a forum for them to explain those ideas and get feedback from a group of both peers and experts,” said Prof. John Cole, UT Dallas CS Professor and the CSREX Chair, about CSREX and the importance of undergraduate students participating in research.

In addition to submissions from UT Dallas students, the 2017 Computer Science Research Expo received numerous submissions from students outside of UT Dallas including from New Mexico State University, University of Texas at El Paso, and the University of Texas at Arlington. In total, through the highly selective submission process, only seven undergraduate submissions were selected for presentation based on the quality of the research.

The following is a list of all the undergraduate research projects presented at the 2017 Third Annual Undergraduate Computer Science Research Expo:

The 15-minute student presentations ranged from research papers to posters to software demos. The presentations covered a wide variety of topics in computer science including cyber security, computing theory, intelligent systems, interactive computing, networking, software engineering, and systems. The presentations subsequently were judged by the Drs. Khiem Le, Benjamin Raichel, Charles Shields, and Professors John Cole, Michael Christiansen, and Shyam Karrah.

Prof. John Cole, UT Dallas CS Professor and the CSREX Chair,   “Not everyone needs to wait until graduate school to do research.  Many students have interesting and original ideas much earlier, and the Computer Science Undergraduate Research Expo provides a forum for them to explain those ideas and get feedback from a group of both peers and experts.”

The following were the top three winning research projects for the Third Annual Computer Science Research Expo:

First Place: Predicting Energy Consumption of Campus Buildings – Brett Pelkey, Yifan Hao and Huiping Cao – New Mexico State University

Second Place: Development of a Persian News Corpus and Natural Language Tool Kit –Mavis Francia – The University of Texas at Dallas

Third Place: The Introduction of a Safety-based State Machine for Improved System Safety Analysis – Samuel Benton – The University of Texas at Dallas

The expo also included a series of brief talks given by UT Dallas CS faculty members. Dr. Zygmunt Haas gave a short presentation on the importance of attaining a PhD and the advantages of obtaining a PhD from UT Dallas. Drs. Janell Straach, Cong Liu, Xiaohu Guo, Murat Kantarcioglu, Ding-Zhu Du, and Nicholas Ruozzi highlighted research currently being conducted in, Cyber Security, Computer Systems, Machine Learning and Language Processing, Software Engineering, Networking, Computing Theory, and Intelligent Systems groups, respectively, within the UT Dallas CS Department.

Click here to view all the photos from the Third Annual Computer Science Research Expo (CSREX).

ABOUT THE UT DALLAS COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT

The UT Dallas Computer Science program is one of the largest Computer Science departments in the United States with over 2,100 bachelor’s degree students, more than 1,000 MS master’s students, 150 Ph.D. students, and 86 faculty members, as of Fall 2016. With The University of Texas at Dallas’ unique history of starting as a graduate institution first, the CS Department is built on a legacy of valuing innovative research and providing advanced training for software engineers and computer scientists.